Here is the headline from Elsevier's press release: "Elsevier acquires QUOSA, provider of life sciences content management and work flow productivity solutions." At first glance, that's a pretty jargon-heavy statement, but in a nutshell, Elsevier sits on an abundance of content while QUOSA has developed software to help manage content. It seems like a good match, but where the company will go with it remains a bit hazy at this point. It appears that the two companies intend to combine the technical innovations developed at QUOSA with the financial backing and content collections at Elsevier to improve literature management capabilities for the user.

Gale, part of Cengage Learning, signed an agreement with the National Geographic Society to archive more than 100 years of National Geographic Magazine. Available to libraries this spring, National Geographic Magazine Archive, 1888-1994 will include all issues of the magazine in a fully searchable and intuitive interface.

Deep Web Technologies, a provider of federated search technologies, announced that working in close cooperation with OSTI, the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Scientific and Technical Information and the operating agent for WorldWideScience.org (WWS), and Elsevier, it released a WWS application for SciVerse Applications. Elsevier's Application Marketplace & Developer Network features a marketplace that allows researchers to select and create applications that enhance research and search results obtained from the new SciVerse Hub.

Internet2, McGraw-Hill, and Courseload announced implementation of an eText Pilot Trial Pack to students and faculty at five universities for the Spring 2012 semester. The five institutions, also Internet2 members, include the following: University of California, Berkeley; Cornell University; University of Minnesota; University of Virginia; and the University of Wisconsin.

What will you remember from 2011? Techies will no doubt focus on the iPad 2, iPhone 4S, the Kindle Fire, and the rest of the new Kindle family, and all the new apps for smartphones. Folks in the information industry will likely remember 2011 as one of adapting new technologies and testing viable business models for the new emerging information landscape. Librarians will likely remember it as a year of intense pressure to squeeze more eresources and services from their (shrinking) budgets.

March 14–18, The 18th ACM Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing (CSCW 2015)Place: Vancouver, British ColumbiaSponsor/Organizer: Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)URL: cscw.acm.org/2015

March 25–28, ACRL 2015 ConferencePlace: Portland, Ore.Sponsor/Organizer: Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL)URL: conference.acrl.org

March 26–28, The Third International Conference on E-Technologies and Business on the Web (EBW2015)Place: Paris Sponsor/Organizer: Society of Digital Information and Wireless Communications (SDIWC)URL: sdiwc.net/conferences/ebw2015

March 29–April 2, The 37th European Conference on Information Retrieval (ECIR 2015)Place: Vienna Sponsor/Organizer: Austrian Computer Society and the Faculty of Informatics at the Vienna University of TechnologyURL: ecir2015.ifs.tuwien.ac.at/wp

Library Stuff –librarystuff.net – the library blog dedicated to resources for keeping current and professional development, written by Steven M. Cohen.

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